If you don’t like the administration, wait 15 minutes. After 10 years of campaigning on retrenchment from the Middle East, President Donald Trump in June decided to open a hot new front in the neverending wars by bombing Iran and providing support to Israeli military operations against the Islamic Republic. Our cover story, by Scott Horton and Brandon Weeks, examines how we arrived at this juncture, and whether there is any hope of extricating ourselves from the West’s eternal briar patch. Nic Rowan’s haunting reminiscence on a movie about Iran adds a splash of tragic color to the troubling tale.

Would the bombs have fallen if the American people had been consulted? This is the question that hovers over Hunter DeRensis’s postmortem of the now little-remembered political push for a war declaration referendum to be incorporated into the Constitution. In any case, we must deal with reality as it is; our own Sumantra Maitra examines the destabilizing effect of that reality on an American treaty ally in the region. 

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It’s a shame, as there’s so much at home to attend to. Spencer Neale, The American Conservative’s features editor, surveys the meteoric rise of the socialist Zohran Mamdani in New York City, while our founding editor Scott McConnell remembers the great law-enforcement accomplishment of the 1990s that made America’s first city livable again. Evie Solheim interviews the man trying to institutionalize the “Make America Healthy Again” movement. Just over the border, Joseph Addington takes a look at Mexico’s fresh new security policy. 

What is the way out? Is there any hope for a true return to the America First paradigm? For America First, perhaps there must be a first American—this is what Jim Antle considers in his feature on the prospect of diplomacy flowing through the Vatican City, where Chicago Bob, These States’ first pope, resides in splendor over the Roman court. In any case, we have our own little gardens to tend: Robert Wyllie reviews a new book about the luminary of Stanford University, Rene Girard; Peter Tonguette reviews the correspondence of the late leading light of American letters, John Updike; Andrew Day reviews a new biography of Sam Francis, the man who asked what America was and found disturbing answers. 

This issue, like every issue, has been a labor of love, a collection of TAC’s finest writing in an attractively designed and printed physical object. Please consider subscribing and helping us do what we do best. This editorial’s headline is a question; here at Farragut Square, at least, the answer is clear. We’ll keep on trucking. We’d love to have you with us for the long, strange trip.